Yaxhpal's List: Social Issues

• Government on Monday told the Supreme Court that it is difficult to block international porn sites in the country and sought more time to consult various ministries to find a solution.
• The sexual content that kids are accessing today is far more graphic, violent, brutal, deviant and destructive and has put entire society in danger so also safety threats to public order in India
• The petitioner most respectfully submits that most of the offences committed against women/girls/children are fuelled by pornography
• he worrying issue is the severity and gravity of the images is increasing. It is a matter of serious concern that prepubescent children are being raped

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• A community-led sanitation campaign by the Rajasthan government and UNICEF has made 12 panchayats in four districts open defecation free
• Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS)
• only when all its members genuinely feel a need for sanitary toilets and are not pressurised to do so
• a community can become open defecation free (ODF)
• The motivator, who plays a key role, starts by interacting with the community
• illagers are also explained how the women are exposed to risks when they go out at night or before dawn to defecate in the open
• villagers are also informed the number of work days lost, medical expenses and the impact on livelihood because of illnesses caused due to open defecation
• According to Census 2011, 80 per cent of Rajasthan’s rural households defecate in the open.
• The school has children’s cabinet for sanitation and environment.
• Today with every household having a toilet, girls in the village are the happiest lot. They say that earlier they were ashamed of defecating in the open and their mothers had to accompany them at night
• There were also fears of bad elements, insect bites and falling ill. Now they feel liberated.
• Are the people also being taught how to clean their toilets and keep those spaces clean and hygienic?

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• Matter referred to a five-judge Supreme Court Constitution Bench
• has a far-reaching significance on the development of the children in our country who are the future adults
• moulds the thinking process and tutors on the communication skills
• primary school years of a child are an important phase in a child’s education
• rimary education lays the groundwork for future learning and success.

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• Madhya Pradesh Finance Minister Raghavji resigned on Friday after his former aide filed a police complaint that he was sodomised by the Minister for the last three years

• Sub-Inspector of Police Surjit Singh, who confessed to have killed more than 80 people in fake encounters

• A Myanmar monks’ convention has agreed to draw up draft legislation to impose restrictions on interfaith marriage
• The convention agreed to set up an association to pursue the interfaith marriage proposal and other legal means of protecting Buddhism
• Buddhism is the proclaimed faith of about 90 per cent of Myanmar’s 60 million population, while Islam and Christianity account for less than 5 per cent each
• Sectarian clashes have been on the rise in Myanmar since June 2012, when Buddhist communities in Rakhine State attacked Rohingya Muslims, leaving 167 people dead and 125,000 people homeless. The incident was sparked by the alleged rape and murder of a Buddhist woman by three Muslims

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• Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi flagged off the train service connecting Qazigund and Banihal
• The 11-km-long tunnel across the Pir Panjal mountain range would strengthen the State’s physical integration with the rest of India. “It has not only connected the two physically divided regions but also joined hearts.”

• Women Shariat Courts, the first of their kind in the country to handle cases relating to Muslim women and dispense speedy justice to them, will be set up in Dindigul, Mumbai, Pune and Ahmedabad
• adjudicate on matters such divorce, polygamy, maintenance, custody of children and property rights
• courts would function as per injunctions of the Holy Quran
• dispense speedy justice to women
• Women have failed to get justice from the Imarat-e-Shariah or Shariah courts run by the All India Muslim Personal Law Board
• In the absence of a codified Muslim personal law, these matters were so far dealt with by Qazis, Muftis and Maulvis and women’s groups have often complained that these centres were biased
• There would also be a national bench comprising eminent scholars and activists to give their opinion on complex matters of Muslim personal law to safeguard the interests of women and children

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• It also issues notices to Central and State governments, EC and 4 major parties
• there was an upsurge in caste-based political rallies in the State, and prayed for a ban on such rallies as they were against the spirit of the Constitution and created enmity along caste lines
• Bahujan Samaj Party held a “Brahmin bhaichara sammelan” in Lucknow
• “Muslim bhaichara sammellans” were also organised by it at Barabanki and Lucknow

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• Key function of media is to “destabilise unjust policies,” says N. Ram
• Tariq Ali said much of their success in the past was because they enjoyed the right to fail, while coming up with initiatives. With market forces coming into play, heads of departments no longer had that right and decisions were being made by managers.
• There could be no forward movement without some form of politics
• apart from playing a credible information function and remaining investigative and apolitical, one key function of the media was to “destabilise unjust policies.”
• ection 66A of the Information Technology Act was being misused to arrest and prosecute users of social media for even innocuous comments on political leaders
• Jawaharlal Nehru University professor M.S.S. Pandian said the new media had closed the possibility of people being in touch with ground reality. There was need to “reclaim the street.”

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• comprehensive law to curb honour killings and hate speeches against inter-caste marriages.
• in Tamil Nadu, there was a systematic propaganda carried out openly against inter-caste marriages by political parties and a few organisations
• honour killings happened more in cases where one among the inter-caste couple belonged to a Scheduled Caste community

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• Religion no matter what it is; always been biased for women and subjugation of the right is prevalent in sacred text;
• virginity is treated as symbol of honour not only for the girl but to her whole family, and if her virginity is lost before marriage or without the consent of family before marriage, then havoc hits that family
• As Voltaire said “It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.”
• It is not just about men but ladies too in a family suffer from medieval mindset
• no honour is bigger than individual
• issue is not with the law but with the implementation and manner in which they are handled by the police.
• Media for once can play instrumental role by respecting women as an Individual not by showing her as centre of family where she has to be a mother, sister and wife.

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• One of the main reasons for acid attacks is easy availability of acid across the counter
• 14 States
• had issued a notification for a victim compensation scheme and the others were reminded and asked to follow the scheme
• Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance 2013, which had received presidential assent, had Sections 326 A and 326 B in the Indian Penal Code for making acid attack a specific offence, providing for a maximum punishment of life sentence

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• In a tragic denouement to a story of love frustrated by caste bigotry, Dalit youth E. Ilavarasan, whose marriage to a Vanniyar girl led to caste tension in Tamil Nadu last year, was found dead near a railway track here on Thursday afternoon
• Pattali Makkal Katchi for a campaign that marriages involving Dalit boys and non-Dalit brides in Tamil Nadu were part of a larger design to lure girls from other castes with a view to extorting money
• Ms. Divya’s father committed suicide last November amidst taunts by his community members for letting her marry a Dalit youth

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• By a 5-4 majority, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a much-anticipated ruling that determined as unconstitutional the 1996 Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA), which denies federal government benefits to legally married same-sex couples, on the grounds that it violates the Fifth Amendment, which protects against abuse of government authority

• Argentina’s Congress has approved a law creating a national registry with the DNA of rapists
• The registry will store the DNA of convicted rapists and sex abusers collected at the crime scene as well from victims when criminals have not been caught
• based on Megan’s Law

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• A Healthy Population is a Fundamental Ingredient of Inclusive Development and Nation building – Vice President

• High quality science led by female academics is under-represented in comparison to that of their male counterparts. If this dearth of female voices harms women’s advancement within academia, then society as a whole is also losing some of its best scientists
• So why would men accept speaking invitations more than women?
• In a perfect world, women and men would share the demands of building a family equally, but recent research has shown that babies matter more in the careers of female academics
• women are less likely than men to self-promote – behaviour that may be a form of self-defence, since studies show that it doesn’t pay for women to be seen as successful and ambitious
• But our opinion is that we could begin to remedy these major societal challenges with small steps, like insisting on non-gendered toys and clothes

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• Statistics released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) last week show that as many as 1,35,445 people in India have committed suicide in 2012
• 79,773 male and 40,715 female took the extreme step
• Tamil Nadu tops the list with 16,927 suicides followed by Maharashtra with 16,112 suicides
• Family problems accounted for 84 suicides per day on an average
• ocial and economic causes have led most of the males to commit suicides
• emotional and personal causes have mainly driven females to end their lives
• 70.3% of the suicide victims were married
• As per the NCRB statistics, 1,35,585 persons had committed suicide in the country in 2011

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• A brainstorming to strengthen legal services for vulnerable communities is slated in Hyderabad on the weekend
• Free legal aid has been made into a right under the Legal Services Authority Act of 1987 by constituting the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA)
• to strengthen the engagement of the Legal Services Authority at the state, district and taluk level in advancing the legal entitlements of vulnerable communities such as women in sex work, injecting drug users and sexual minorities, the NALSA is conducting a seminar
• NALSA was constituted in 1995 to bring uniformity to legal aid programmes throughout the country. As the apex body NALSA lays down the policies and principles for providing legal services under the provisions of the Act. It also disburses funds and grants to the State Legal Services Authorities and NGOs for implementing legal awareness and legal aid

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